Practicalizing the Theories of Organizational Culture: The Exemplar of a Sales Team

Abstract

Business applications of the concepts based on theories of organizational culture abound in the literature but in piecemeal. Not unexpectedly, applications of the concepts based on the totality of the theory on all 3 aspects of organizational culture, namely artifacts, espoused values and shared assumptions are hard to stumble upon. Added to this gap is the fact that mixed methods approach to the study of organizational culture is scarce. The objective of this study therefore was to explain the relationships amongst the concepts identified in the organizational culture setting using theory and then also explain the relationship between the core element of organization culture (OG) and Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO). A mixed method approach involving a concurrent nested model was used. In the first part, qualitative approach was used through Field work study of the sales team of a manufacturing company. The research was guided by theoretical propositions. In the second part, a quantitative approach was used to assess the relationship between the central phenomenon of OG, which is values of trust and EO. The theoretical propositions sufficiently “pattern matched” the actual results whilst the bivariate relationship between Trust and EO was positive and significant. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed at the tail end of the article.

Keywords: Organizational culture theory, trust, sales team, concurrent nested strategy, pattern matching;